China's Expansion Enigma

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

China | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | 5 photos

China leads the world in renewable energy investment, but relies on coal to power 80% of its electricity. It leads the world in poverty eradication, yet millions die each year from water and air pollution. Its growth statistics are unparalleled. Still, much of the country lives a rural, subsistence lifestyle, one paradoxically threatened by unrestricted growth. It seems that nowhere else is defined by such stark contrast and conflicting interests. Even after traveling through the country for several weeks, it was impossible to get a sense of the scale—and devastation—of development in China. That uncertainty is reflected in my photos.
From the confines of a bus, my classmates and I traveled from Beijing, to the far reaches of Inner Mongolia, Yichang, Shanghai and seven provinces in between on an energy education field trip. While our travels unveiled many insights of the direction China is headed, it created more new questions than it answered. The lack of transparency and control of information that is upheld by the Chinese government was reflected in the bus’s windows, and is a strong undercurrent of the story told by my photos. Indeed, that all but one of my photos were taken from a moving bus further symbolizes our view of China as spectators rather than participants, prohibiting us from completely answering the questions China poses. The would-be weakness of shooting from a bus is surprisingly an artistic strength, as it allows the paradoxical uncertainty that is China to be fully conveyed in the images. The photos hint at what the government has difficulty acknowledging: that China’s identity is changing faster than the country itself.